Local startups win grants to make government more open

Oakland — and pretty much the government as a whole (Hello, NSA!) — has come under repeated scrutiny and calls for more transparency. In one of its latest scuffles, an audit in March found that two Oakland city council members had interfered in the bidding of a $2 million construction contract.

Now an Oakland startup, Department of Better Technology, has won a $460,000 grant for a project to make government contract bidding more transparent. Its software, Procure.io, promises to simplify the process for small businesses to bid on government work.

Another included Civic Insight, a San Francisco startup that is developing technology so that people can get the latest information on vacant or underutilized properties so they can find ways to make them productive again. (Perhaps these vacant lots in Berkeley?)

OpenCounter in Santa Cruz, meanwhile, is developing software allowing entrepreneurs to go online to register a new business and receive information on permitting and inspections, thereby avoiding repeated trips to city hall. Both projects came out of San Francisco’s Code for America, known as the “Peace Corp for geeks,” which teams up techies from around the nation for a year-long fellowship to help make local governments more tech friendly.